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[Alps]

I'm a chat mod now?

Well earned. D:

[cl94]

Time to play American Pie in observance of the Chat's last day. Trivia in 10 hours for a final sendoff, maybe we should have a toast at the end?

[Roadgeekteen]

Time to play American Pie in observance of the Chat's last day. Trivia in 10 hours for a final sendoff, maybe we should have a toast at the end?

Um the chat's still up. Personally I haven't really been on there since 2017.

[Alex]

Time to play American Pie in observance of the Chat's last day. Trivia in 10 hours for a final sendoff, maybe we should have a toast at the end?

Um the chat's still up. Personally I haven't really been on there since 2017.

Happy to post that it looked like the forum software update resolved issues with it. May run into the same issue at the end of 2020 when the PHP will have to updated again on the server.

[webny99]

This seems the most recent discussion about chat, so I'll ask here:

Do you have to contribute to the chat in order to stay? I jumped in just to see what it was all about, but got bumped back to the forum home page before long.

[Alps]

This seems the most recent discussion about chat, so I'll ask here:

Do you have to contribute to the chat in order to stay? I jumped in just to see what it was all about, but got bumped back to the forum home page before long.

Yes, you shouldn't sit there.

[Duke87]

So it wasn't working yesterday and still isn't working today. Is it fixable or have we finally reached the point where it just isn't compatible with SMF anymore?

[Scott5114]

It's not SMF that's the problem, it's the PHP interpreter–the language keeps changing so older code slowly goes out of compliance with PHP's expectations. (And Ionos, our web host, will not allow us to stay on an old version of PHP without shelling out a bunch of money for support.)

I believe the current plan is to try to find a replacement that is compatible with PHP 8, but I'm not sure if we've ascertained whether one actually exists.

[rickmastfan67]

have we finally reached the point where it just isn't compatible with SMF anymore?

I think this is the answer sadly.

[Roadgeekteen]

When I went onto the chat, the whole thing just screamed 2010. If that chat is no longer usable, we could create a discord server or something like that to replace it.

[Scott5114]

There's nothing wrong with software designed in 2010.

I get paid good money to write software with the client explicitly requesting "please make the user interface resemble something from 1997".

My favorite video game is from 1991 and my wife's is from 1987.

A good chunk of my work is done using a piece of software based on a design from 1979.

It's all a matter of taste.

[Takumi]

There is a Discord server already, but it’s not really used.

[Roadgeekteen]

There's nothing wrong with software designed in 2010.

Well there must be something wrong with that particular software from 2010, as it doesn't work anymore.

[Scott5114]

There's nothing wrong with software designed in 2010.

Well there must be something wrong with that particular software from 2010, as it doesn't work anymore.

No shit?

It's not SMF that's the problem, it's the PHP interpreter–the language keeps changing so older code slowly goes out of compliance with PHP's expectations. (And Ionos, our web host, will not allow us to stay on an old version of PHP without shelling out a bunch of money for support.)

I believe the current plan is to try to find a replacement that is compatible with PHP 8, but I'm not sure if we've ascertained whether one actually exists.

[Rothman]

People still go into the Chat?

[Max Rockatansky]

People still go into the Chat?

There is quite a few people who are active in it.  Apparently the demand is enough that alternate options are being discussed off forum.  The hook seems to be that forum chat wasn’t logged?

[Hunty2022]

People still go into the Chat?

I used to be on the chat somewhat often at night for a short period of time, I haven’t been in the chat since mid-January, I was thinking of returning multiple times recently.

[Duke87]

There is quite a few people who are active in it.  Apparently the demand is enough that alternate options are being discussed off forum.  The hook seems to be that forum chat wasn’t logged?

This is certainly a big part of the appeal: what you say in an AJAX chatroom is not scraped to build a consumer profile of you for advertising purposes, nor can it be subpoenaed by courts because there is no permanent record of it. It is therefore a nice safe space for discussing some things people might, for various reasons, not be comfortable discussing somewhere that doesn't offer this level of innate privacy protection.

Most internet forums that used to have their own chat do seem to have given up and just created a Discord server instead. But Discord, like all modern social media, is permanently logged so does not offer AJAX's privacy benefit. It also requires that you have a Discord account in order to use it, which will be a barrier to adoption for some.

[Rothman]

There is quite a few people who are active in it.  Apparently the demand is enough that alternate options are being discussed off forum.  The hook seems to be that forum chat wasn’t logged?

This is certainly a big part of the appeal: what you say in an AJAX chatroom is not scraped to build a consumer profile of you for advertising purposes, nor can it be subpoenaed by courts because there is no permanent record of it. It is therefore a nice safe space for discussing some things people might, for various reasons, not be comfortable discussing somewhere that doesn't offer this level of innate privacy protection.

What the freak are you talking about in there nowadays?

Badmouthing the ex-spouse?

I guess I need to subpoena the lot of you now.

[Roadgeekteen]

There is quite a few people who are active in it.  Apparently the demand is enough that alternate options are being discussed off forum.  The hook seems to be that forum chat wasn’t logged?

This is certainly a big part of the appeal: what you say in an AJAX chatroom is not scraped to build a consumer profile of you for advertising purposes, nor can it be subpoenaed by courts because there is no permanent record of it. It is therefore a nice safe space for discussing some things people might, for various reasons, not be comfortable discussing somewhere that doesn't offer this level of innate privacy protection.

Most internet forums that used to have their own chat do seem to have given up and just created a Discord server instead. But Discord, like all modern social media, is permanently logged so does not offer AJAX's privacy benefit. It also requires that you have a Discord account in order to use it, which will be a barrier to adoption for some.

What kind of freaking things are you guys talking about in the chat that would make you fear THAT much? I understand worrying about privacy to some extent, but seriously?

[Max Rockatansky]

There is a lot of people in the chat circles who are involved in government work.  You tend to have to exercise some caution with what you say on public platforms as a government employee.  Although, I find the prospect of anything from a chat session being used against someone in an employment hearing to be so minuscule that it’s probably not worth worrying about. 

But then again I speak from the perspective as someone who conducts employee investigations. There was only a single instance where an employee’s social media profile was something I could use against them.  That particular instance was when I still worked in the private sector and it was beyond damning.  Nobody I know in chat groups does anything or says anything approaching that level.

[Duke87]

What kind of freaking things are you guys talking about in the chat that would make you fear THAT much?

Well the forum is a logged medium so we're not discussing it here. 


For the record, if there were any credible threat of anyone getting hurt based on what was being discussed, those of us with mod powers in the chat would have taken appropriate action to intervene.

[J N Winkler]

I am not so sure the chat is (was) unloggable--in principle one could have a net logger open in Firefox or Chrome and then save a HAR.  As the old Russian proverb goes:  "Man is master of the word left unsaid; once it is said, it is his master."

[Rothman]

There is a lot of people in the chat circles who are involved in government work.  You tend to have to exercise some caution with what you say on public platforms as a government employee.  Although, I find the prospect of anything from a chat session being used against someone in an employment hearing to be so minuscule that it’s probably not worth worrying about.

Eh, I'd be as careful in there as I am on here, anyway.  There are more reasonable things to be cautious of than thinking a subpoena's coming your way from something said on here or in Chat.

   

[hbelkins]

There is a lot of people in the chat circles who are involved in government work.  You tend to have to exercise some caution with what you say on public platforms as a government employee.  Although, I find the prospect of anything from a chat session being used against someone in an employment hearing to be so minuscule that it’s probably not worth worrying about.

Eh, I'd be as careful in there as I am on here, anyway.  There are more reasonable things to be cautious of than thinking a subpoena's coming your way from something said on here or in Chat.

   

As one who has never gotten into real-time chat, be it here or IRC or anywhere else -- think the old AOL chat rooms which never had much appeal to me as an AOL user -- this isn't a real concern of mine. I tend to do online stuff on my own schedule and really don't feel the need to participate in things of that nature.

But this makes me wonder about something on a much larger scale. Why do ISPs, platforms, etc., log IP addresses? It seems to me that keeping a record of IP logins just opens them up to a bunch of unwanted legal scrutiny, such as warrants or the aforementioned subpoenas.

There was a case out of Georgia involving the Topix forums several years ago. If anyone doesn't remember Topix, it was an online forum/bulletin board where one could either post as a registered user or a non-permanent username that could be changed with each individual post. Subforums existed for most every community, and a lot of rumors and gossip were posted there. Someone in a Georgia community took exception to something that was posted on Topix, they got a court order for the poster's IP, and legal action followed. I do not remember if it was a civil case or if criminal charges were filed. At any rate, Topix ended up shutting down their community forums sometime after that.

It always occurred to me that if Topix had not logged IP addresses, that whole situation would have been avoided. And I say this as someone whose name got mentioned derogatorily on local Topix boards in more than one community.

If I was running something like that, I wouldn't log IP addresses.